Initiative for Green Habitats

24/08/2024

It is an indescribable feeling to see a place you have designed come to life!

A home for a vivacious, socially active family, I approached this project with an intention to allow all the spaces to complement their lifestyle.

Indoors, reclaimed timber was used for the flooring, and rammed earth walls specially prepared by ### were created, absorbing any echo as the open patio reverberates with the music. The lights, designed to filter through handcrafted cane and bamboo fixtures, add to the warm glow of earth-coloured walls.

The outside area echoes the patio, where musical sessions attract varying numbers of people; from intimate groups to large crowds. Guests and family, who sit or stand around the courtyards enveloped by the built up areas that nestle these open air spaces.

An empty building is just a shell awaiting people to breathe life into it!

23/04/2024

For those who would like to listen to a conversation that I had with a young architect who has started a podcast. Apologies in advance for the millions of 'ums', 'errs', 'you knows' and other repetitive words used by me. Hopefully, once you manage to wade through it all, you'll be left with a few things to ponder on and gain some insights into the work we do.

Kudos to Tara Anand, the young architect in the making, to patiently listen in, and for asking intelligent questions and putting this delightful podcast together.

Listen to this episode from Knowledge Works Podcast on Spotify. The principal architect of Initiative for Green Habitats, Ar. Sridhar is among the leading architects in sustainable design across various project scales. Over the years, he has worked in both, the rural and urban realms of the built en...

10/02/2024

In the 'House of Courts', a residence we completed last year in North Bangalore, the earth block wall, in portions, transforms into jaali (perforated screen) walls. This makes the wall transparent, allowing filtered light through, and creates a shadow play between light and dark depending on the time of day. Such architectural elements are very useful in tropical buildings, cutting glare and conditioning the site that passes through.
While arranging the blocks to create this jaali pattern, a further accentuation is provided in the 3rd dimension, highlighting all horizontal tie blocks, on both sides of the wall.
This earth block masonry jaali reappears in certain portions across this residence in a manner that it isn't overkill. What's more the pattern is also carried through, in metal jaalis that open out towards the east and west courts of this house. Only in the metal jaalis, the negative and solid spaces are flipped.

22/11/2023

It might just be a humble public toilet, but the delicate slender sections of timber set against the rough cut, solidity of the stone masonry and stone tiling captures a play of textures, that engages you in a way that most modern day buildings don't.
These handcrafted tactile buildings tell stories of the blade that cut the timber, the chisel that shaped the stone, and the eyes and hands of the people who gave shape to this building. The textures of this particular building also conceal tales of building material waste, their use, reuse and repurposing.
Textures act, therefore, like fingerprints, DNA, or perhaps as unique QR codes (to use a more appropriate example of this time), which encode narratives, stories, dare I say histories, of the built.

07/11/2023

A public toilet built within a North Bangalore residential community. The design is modelled on the typical rural home found in this region around Bangalore, complete with a fore court. What's more, half the stone was left over from other work, the timber was from timber available without community, the floor tiles were from other leftover construction works, and so was the of the roofing sheets.

29/10/2023

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
- William Blake
Doors leading out, but within the home, and doors leading into the home, but out. While we have often heard us architects speak of integrating the outside with the inside, this home exploits the relation between the in and out, blurring the line that separates the two. Here the outdoors become integral spaces in everyday life here.

03/09/2023

Shadow play, resonating the coming together of different sustainability agendas of this home in north Bangalore. Reducing ones dependency on high energy building systems (Bamboo roof structure over debris mud concrete walls) + Reuse (through the careful selection of heritage furniture... The bar unit at the bottom of the picture is about a 100 years old) + Repurpose (of traditional Khasi baskets Khos into a roof hung light array).

04/07/2022

A mud rendered surface here, a dash of paint there, roofing sheets above and stone tiles surfaces below. All this activity breathes life and warmth into what was a cold shell just a few weeks ago. Edges get defined, faces get enhanced, spaces and volumes get meaning, and the threshold between the inside and out begins to make sense. We have officially entered another exciting phase of a project.

25/06/2022

As the sun sets on one of our construction sites, the buildings begin to glow, lit by a worker family calling this their temporary home. Earth and Bamboo add earthy tones under the twilight sky, bathed by the warm light of a lone bulb deep within.

26/04/2022

An Earth and Bamboo work shed, which will house a Bamboo incense stick manufacturing setup, was built during the pandemic by the trained workforce of FEEDS, and supported remotely by IGH. While our exacting eye will find many areas of improvement, this building demonstrates the confidence of this team. Kudos to their achievement... executed with no presence of ours on the ground.
This building marks the first of many to come up in this little village based industry hub, spearheaded by BP Thangkiew. There are more stories to come from here over the next few months/years. This structure and others built by the FEEDS team over the past few years are testimony to a far more sustainable model of development, especially in this North Eastern state of Meghalaya. One that could elevate the rural economy of this state, giving employment to scores of rural folk in the process. I wish the powers that be are listening.